Please note, if you are a returning djforums member from prior to 2012 (end of the mayan calendar) and have not yet re-registered, you will need to re-register to the site for 2.0.

If this is your first visit, be sure to
check out the FAQ by clicking the
link above. You may have to register
before you can post: click the register link above to proceed. To start viewing messages,
select the forum that you want to visit from the selection below.

How much of the issue is the repetitiveness contained within one song rather than the repetitiveness of hearing the "same" 4-to-the-floor beat all night long? Its not that most of the people I talk to can't appreciate a house track, for example, but rather they don't want to listen to 4 hours of house music... they want some variation.

Its like any music you listen to if you arent a fan of it or dont listen to it on a regular basis. To me country all sounds the same, but Im sure if I listened to it often Id pick up on all the nuances people love about it. Same goes for house, theres plenty of variation within tracks and sets, but unless you listen to it and have an ear for it, its all going to sound the same to you, admittedly the differences between and within a house track are more subtle than in a country song, but you still gotta have an ear for either

Its like any music you listen to if you arent a fan of it or dont listen to it on a regular basis. To me country all sounds the same, but Im sure if I listened to it often Id pick up on all the nuances people love about it. Same goes for house, theres plenty of variation within tracks and sets, but unless you listen to it and have an ear for it, its all going to sound the same to you, admittedly the differences between and within a house track are more subtle than in a country song, but you still gotta have an ear for either

Great point - how do you express this to someone else though?

Perhaps I'm making it out to be bigger than it is, but it seems that its easier to broadly identify and share those nuances you speak of with pop and more traditional (aka instrument-based) music compared the "electronic" or "computer" music.

I get to the point now that I literally get sleepy with DJs playing the same music... Some local DJs around here think that they are in Ibiza and want to just play the same crappy house with no one singing, no real melody, just nothing. This is probably one of the reasons why I like latin clubs now more than just top 40 clubs...

DJs playing Funk, Soul and R&B songs noticed that the people on the dancefloor showed the most ethusiastic responses to stripped down, drum heavy, and repetetive parts of the songs. So they tried to extend those parts, first by using multiple copies of the same song, then by making longer edits that focused on those parts of the records (which, by the way, led to the invention of the 12" single, as the 7" format couldn't hold those longer edits..).

This is also where beatmatching came into the picture, in order to keep that groove going without any interruptions.

Repetive rhythms have always been the back-bone and central element of dance music, everything else (melodies, lyrics) are only ornamental. A dance track can easily go without a lead melodie or lyrics, but it isn't a dance track if it doesn't have that repetetive drum part...

This is what sets dance music apart form other kinds of music. I got a feeling that most people who complain that dance music is too repetetive are people who just came into the scene from other styles and still want to hear what they are used to. This is probably why acts like SHM, David Guetta, etc. are so successful: even though their tracks feature dance music's typical drums, the else largely mimic pop songs (song structures, lyrics, melodies...).

Anyways, if you've never found yourself dancing to repetetive drum tracks for hours and hours, getting sucked more and more into the music until you forget everything around you (and no, that does not neccessarily mean taking drugs...), you've never really experienced dance music - you've just been dancing to some music.

Anyways, if you've never found yourself dancing to repetetive drum tracks for hours and hours, getting sucked more and more into the music until you forget everything around you (and no, that does not neccessarily mean taking drugs...), you've never really experienced dance music - you've just been dancing to some music.

So true. Anyone whose experience of dance music consists of singing along/fist-pumping to some "EDM" at a "DJ concert" or a bottle-service club, or jumping about at a Deadmau5 gig cos everyone else is, or moshing to Skrillex, can STFU until they experience it properly

Try to mix subgenres and change your speeds ever so slightly as the night progresses. Switch between vocal tracks and instrumental tracks so it doesn't all feel like a constant bass kick with random melody.